As I was falling asleep last night, it occurred to me that I hadn't properly introduced myself to you yet so here it goes. My name is Stacey Gotsulias and I am the new lead writer here at It's About the Money, Stupid.
My introduction to blogging came 14 years ago before I even had a website. I would send funny emails to my friends in which I would complain about various things like smelly people on the subway, tourists who blocked sidewalks as I was trying to get my lunch or I'd write a collection of quotes and stories I recalled from college. In 2000, yes, it was that long ago, I acquired a Yahoo! Geocities website that I turned into a blog of sorts.

I wrote about anything that came to mind: my daily commute, my job at NBC, the leaky pipes in my NYC apartment, the TV shows I loved and sometimes hated, and I'd occasionally write about the Yankees. Back then, I was live blogging games before I even realized what that was. Geocities is now gone, a forgotten relic of the early Internet age but thanks to web archives, I have some of those pages saved and hopefully no one from my present will discover my embarrassing past.

I didn't begin to blog full-time about the Yankees until two years ago when I found out that a woman named Julie DiCaro was forming a network of sports blogs run by women which came to be known as Aerys Sports. It took me a while to work up the courage to send her an email but I finally did and I was named a contributor to its New York Yankees' site when it launched on February 1, 2011. After a year of blogging nearly every single day, sometimes 2-3 times a day, I became lead writer of Second Place Is Not An Option in late January of last year.

Slowly, and unbelievably, at least to me, my work began to get noticed. In April 2012, I contributed to a group project on Baseball: Past and Present in which the readers voted for nine players to compete in the ultimate sandlot game. I wrote about Mike Schmidt. Since then, I've contributed to three other group projects, all on the Hall of Fame and even wrote my own piece, also in April 2012, about mental illness in baseball called "Manicball: A history of mental illness in baseball." It was well-received within baseball writing circles and opened some doors for me.

I joined The Yankee Analysts in July 2012, doing their daily game recaps and also contributing one post a week of analysis. Then in September, I joined the staff of High Heat Stats where I contribute - or at least try to - once a month. So far, my posts there have been of the historical variety - I like to find players I've never heard of or that people have forgotten and write about them.

Finally, I was asked to come over to It's About the Money, Stupid in October and the rest, as they say, is history.

Some things you need to know about me:

I like sabermetrics and I definitely see its place in baseball analysis but I still don't quite grasp it all yet. I'm working on it but it's hard for me. I've been out of school a long time and the math portion of my brain seems to have taken quite a hit. Plus, I think that Excel is evil and spreadsheets are the devil - mainly because I always find a way to screw them up.

When writing about the Yankees, I will praise them when they're doing well but I will criticize them when they are not. You won't see many 'rah rah the Yankees are still awesome' kinds of posts if they're being blown out by the Kansas City Royals.

I don't use big words and what I mean by that is I like to write as if I'm speaking to the audience. I want the things I write to be relatable and I don't want people reaching for a thesaurus every paragraph. I understand that some people won't like this but it's just how I am and how I've always been.

I am very proud and very honored to have been given this responsibility. We will continue to provide you with what you've come to expect from It's About the Money, Stupid: Up to date Yankees news, quality analysis and great content. I've also been known to have some strong opinions on occasion so that aspect of the site won't change either. So I hope you'll give me the chance to show you what I can do.